#steve biddulph

Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph

“I used to walk my son to school when he was five and we lived on a farm. And there was a point on the walk where his voice would change to a deeper register and I'd go, 'what's going on here?’ One minute he's all, ‘look at the butterflies’ and then ‘right, we're off to school, dad’. And of course he was putting on his masculine armour for the playground.

Saturday Morning Questions: Raising Boys and Tanzanian Sellan

Every Saturday I let you know How I’m doing, what I’m reading/inspired by and what I’m brewing. I want you to know what’s making me tick, but I also want to hear your answers so I can find new inspirations and coffees… in short Saturday is for connecting.

Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph was recommended to us by a fantastic set of parents to two teenage boys. My wife had been sharing her dismay at…

Steve Biddulph, bestselling author of Raising Boys, has just invented second-wave feminism for us (thanks, Steve!) in his new book, Raising Girls. I am not kidding:

"I want to start a more active feminism, to help girls see what their options are," Biddulph said, noting the original feminist mantra of ''girls can do anything'' has been reduced to a choice between supermodel, movie star or pop singer.

I am going to be a Dad any day now and it gets you thinking about a lot of stuff right…? Like which school would I like them to go to, what beliefs and culture do I want to ‘impart’, how do I define, right and wrong?

School and education in our western society is a pretty big deal. But how we learn is an interesting thing. The structure of the school system, tests and assignments with a right and wrong answer seems to limit us and the development of a create mind. There is a huge focus on science and english but very little on music and art. I remember being graded 29/30 once and being told I didn’t get 100% as the teacher felt that you just can’t go giving 100%!

In Australia recently the government released a My School website which allowed users to go and see the ranking of their local school based on things like reading, spelling, math scores etc. It compared all the schools in the state and would show where your school sat from a grade perspective.

The question this left me with is, does being a school with high grades mean the kids will be a good influence on my child? When I think about what school I want my child to be at doing well is important I guess but being a good person is top of my list. Like it or not peer pressure will quite probably have as big a part to play in my child’s life as I do.

So what do I expect my child to learn from school?

Grading is fine but does school teach critical thinking? The best class I did at school was Christian Studies in form 6 (year 11?) This was a great class because we used to go and have philosophical debates around euthanasia and abortion with the head of curriculum. We were introduced to critical thinking and making an argument. We were shown how to think and form opinion and debate and back up our statements. There were less than 10 people in the class (possibly only six if my memory serves me correct) everyone else had a study period, they missed out.

When I used to think of philosophy I would think of discussion of grand ideas. It was the defining of everything and somehow involved classical studies (I guess I had an image of old Socrates type dudes standing around shooting the breeze.)

When I started to read about philosophy after leaving school I realised it is more like studying math. Yes it debates the big ideas but it uses logic and structures. I have a book called “50 Philosophy ideas you really should know” by Ben Dupre which presents many of the foundational ideas of philosophy in easy 2-3 page explanations. While it does discuss many of the great ideas (is there is a god, what is knowledge, what is beauty etc) a large part of the book is spent discussing concepts that are more like equations. But this understanding of logic underpins the arguments allowing the philosopher to make better judgements about what is and is not true. It is a beautiful subject.

I would love to see my child learn to challenge ideas and be open to asking questions. Having an open and creative mind which is not boxed in. On a personal note I too would love to recapture this innocence.

On TED I found a video by Sir Ken Robinson an “internationally recognised leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources” making a case for an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. The video is below.

Certainly I don’t have the answer to how school should be. Whether to go private or save the money and spend more time playing with the kids and less working (as extolled by Steve Biddulph in his book Manhood), or if home schooling is the way, or even if Montessori or Rudolf Steiner is the best path; but I think that we should spend more time encouraging discovery than we do on learning things by rote.